


Diamond Dogs

by zakhad



Series: Diamond Dogs Album [2]
Category: Star Trek: Mirror Universe, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-04-30 20:54:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14505285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zakhad/pseuds/zakhad
Summary: see summary of part 1.





	Diamond Dogs

**Author's Note:**

> Crawling down the alley on your hands and knee  
> I'm sure you're not protected, for it's plain to see  
> The Diamond Dogs are poachers and they hide behind trees  
> Hunt you to the ground they will, mannequins with kill appeal
> 
> I'll keep a friend serene  
> Oh baby, come on to me  
> Well, she's come, been and gone  
> Come out of the garden, baby  
> You'll catch your death in the fog  
> Young girl, they call them the Diamond Dogs  
> Young girl, they call them the Diamond Dogs

The older style vehicles are easier to maintain. We lurch down the street in the truck, the fat tires rolling over chunks of rubble, even a body now and then.

Interesting how you can adapt -- how the horrific becomes the new normal.

The grinding groan of the engine says we're overdue for some repair work to it. Not that we're going to give it that consideration.

"Chakotay, we're almost there," she tells me. When B'Elanna pulls back from the viewer that served as the window through the armored front of the cab, her face around her eyes is blackened. I grin; that's got to be Paris at work. He would prank people, for morale's sake.

"Get ready," I say, as I'm the one with the intercranial communicator -- in the back of the truck I can hear muted thumping, as people get to their feet and sway against the boxes hiding them. We only have a few of the implants, so each subgroup has a mouthpiece person to relay orders. We stole them -- friends in the supply line of Starfleet "lost" a box.

Somewhere, out there, the Terran Empire has all the technology. Here on Earth, on the ground, in the streets, we're left with all the things they think are useless.

We'll show them.

Through the comm, I hear the soft howling start. The Diamond Dogs are ready.

B'E has her hands on the wheel, her foot on the brakes and her face back in the hole -- and I push my palms against the dirty dashboard. She throws the truck into an abrupt brake-squealing halt, fishtailing it, aiming the back at the door to the building we'd decided should be the sole target in San Francisco. Somewhere, in Paris, London, New York and Brisbane, there were other Maquis cells doing the same. 

"GO!"

I bail out the door, as B'E does on the other side of the cab, and the dogs are already at war -- bounding up the steps to the double door. We race inside behind the wave of our dogs, who are howling at the moon, wild and sure of their impending demise in the name of the cause.

There's the sentry as we'd expected, but he stands like a statue next to the door, watching us bound inside two by two. He's wearing the uniform, a red unitard but without insignia or rank. Basically a security guard, with little training. Someone to sound the alarm -- no one of any importance that they would miss. He just looks at us, at the panel on the wall to his right, and then steps away from it. 

"They're on the top floor," he says. "Don't hurt the aliens. They know about the situation here."

"Are you one of us?" B'E exclaims.

"If he wasn't before, he is now. Want a weapon?"

Most people would be alarmed by all this, taken aback by the offer, some flavor of afraid -- the bald man who's taking off the red jacket and tossing it aside somehow isn't. "No training. You have the truck? I'll keep it running." He glanced at the clear doors, at the filthy panel truck sitting outside.

That was an offer we wouldn't refuse. Someone might take a running truck, so we'd brought the key. I nodded to B'E.

"We just met him, how's he gonna be here still and not take off with it?" she blurts, and it's a good question.

But the man simply stands there -- waiting, and expecting, and not prevaricating or reassuring. Just there. Nothing about him says fear. He's steady. 

"He'll be here," I say, and his slight smile is the only reward. I take the key from B'E and hand it to him. "Let's go."

We're the last ones in the elevator -- the ten ahead of us all waited in turns, three and four at a time up the long ride to the top. We'd looked at floor plans and knew better than to think we could just climb up inside it as Paris had initially thought. At the top everyone's tucked into doorways and waiting, and Tuvok's the first to see us and rush the end of the corridor.

Of course there are sensors, and defenses. Of course Bendera and Jor rush ahead, and go down. By the time we run the gauntlet of the last corridor and all the automated defenses and the two guards in the end, four of us are left -- Tuvok, myself, B'E holding a seared arm thanks to a near miss, and Seska. 

We burst into the room. It was over before it started. I was disappointed that the five people present did not include the Emperor herself.

Tuvok shot Admiral Ross -- it was only fitting. Starfleet had captured Tuvok's wife last year, and we hadn't seen her since. Tuvok knew, in the way that bonded telepaths did, that Ross had been particularly interested in her and it had ended badly. We took the rest with us and left in a hurry.

B'E threw the other admiral, an older man whose name I didn't know, in the back of the truck. The three women -- the aliens that our friend at the wheel had mentioned -- jumped in without a word, and the short one, a dark-eyed beauty, took a second to look me in the eye. I grimaced -- I've been scanned before by telepaths -- and leaped in, leaving the cab for B'Elanna. She slammed the doors shut and I heard the front door slam a second later even as the distant sirens became louder. 

It was like some sort of demented game, trying to hang on to the stacks of boxes roped to the sides of the truck interior, and we didn't always succeed. The rear wheels would bounce over something and then the truck would take a sharp corner at speed, sending one or all of us ricocheting off each other or the walls. 

The ride felt endless. Adrenalin does that. Distorts your sense of time.

And then the truck stopped. The engine went off. The doors opened, and there were the rest of the people in our cell -- Tom Paris grinning like a fool at the front of the dirty, poorly-dressed pack in the front yard of the compound. 

We had chosen a good recruit -- somehow, he'd gotten us away without damage. All the way to our compound on the edge of the city, in an abandoned factory. B'E had been navigating him through the streets. He had to be a skilled driver to do that.

"It's all over the news, the raids in Paris and New York were successful," Paris shouts, as B'Elanna throws her arms around his neck to celebrate. 

Our new recruit steps around the end of the truck and watches the celebrating motley tribe of Maquis hug each other. He turns to me and says, "Dare I ask what I've managed to join?"

"Welcome to the Maquis. I'm Chakotay," I tell him with a smile. 

"Jean-Luc Picard," our friend says, extending a hand. He has a firm grip. 

"May we?" comes a meek female voice from the back of the truck.

"Please come out," I exclaim, waving my band of merry men away to make room. "Paris -- take the admiral into custody."

At the order, Paris and several others leap to attention -- it was a good thing the admiral was unarmed and trying to recover from his wild ride loose in the back of a truck. They pull him out and drag him away. I gesture at the doctor, a one-eyed veteran of Starfleet.

"Bashir, check him for a transponder. Get it on its way to somewhere else fast."

The crowd was dissipating then, with the assumption that there were no other concerns, as I wasn't giving more orders. The women came out, their flowing dresses dusty and torn in places. The older dark-eyed one had lost hair clips and looked angry. "I demand to know who is in charge," she raps out -- as if she is.

"Mother," the other, younger woman says wearily. 

In a moment truly inspired by Coyote, I point at the newest Diamond Dog, and say, "He is."

Picard doesn't so much as blink. "And you, madam?"

The woman pulls herself up taller, tilting her head back a bit, and launches into a haughty reply. "I am Lwaxana Troi, Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed. And who are you?"

"Someone who doesn't care to hand out his name redundantly. As you are telepathic you likely know anything you want to, about us," Picard says, matter-of-fact and dispassionate as I rarely could be. 

The woman seems scandalized -- but deflates rapidly, and laughs a little. "Well. I don't suppose you have anything to drink? I find being kidnapped exceedingly tiresome and thirsty work."

"We have a place -- this way," I put in, gesturing toward the east side of the compound. 

As we head that direction, faint howling comes from the dining hall. Picard sniffs. "They were howling before. What's that about?"

"We have among us an aficionado of the late twentieth century who loves the music of the great artists of the time. He calls us the Diamond Dogs," I explain. "I'm sure he'd be happy to loan you a copy of the book it's based on. It'll sound familiar to you, I wouldn't doubt."

"What book?"

"Something called  _1984_ by an author named Orwell."

There's a twist to Picard's mouth as we escort the three women into the building. "Oh."

Clearly he's well-read. Good. I try not to smile, as he's got the blackface left over from the eye hole in the truck. 


End file.
